This Is The End

Next week Family Style will be making our annual appearance at the Stumptown Comics Fest in lovely Portland, OR... But you WON'T find us on the official exhibitor list, sadly! (Yay! The kind folks at Stumptown just added us to the list! You guys rule). Just like last year, we missed the boat on registration (not our fault, we swear), and the wonderful Eli Bishop of Global Hobo has once again generously offered to host us at his table! So, look for us at the Global Hobo table, where François will be offering a carefully curated selection of Family Style's best work, including (hopefully) a brand new issue of his bird-watching zine Bird Brain!

Family Style @ Stumptown

Next week Family Style will be making our annual appearance at the Stumptown Comics Fest in lovely Portland, OR... But you WON'T find us on the official exhibitor list, sadly! (Yay! The kind folks at Stumptown just added us to the list! You guys rule). Just like last year, we missed the boat on registration (not our fault, we swear), and the wonderful Eli Bishop of Global Hobo has once again generously offered to host us at his table! So, look for us at the Global Hobo table, where François will be offering a carefully curated selection of Family Style's best work, including (hopefully) a brand new issue of his bird-watching zine Bird Brain!

Hero of the Bikelane - New comic by Jonas + François

We (Jonas and François) were recently tapped by the very awesome San Francisco Bike Coalition to create a five-part comic strip series encouraging bicyclists to be the "hero of the bikelane" by reporting potholes to the city. The comic was super hilarious to work on, we got to flex our might and dive into our super-heroic roots. There will be a new strip every week, so check back in for more, and consider joining the SF Bicycle Coalition, they do amazing work for bikers, pedestrians, and anyone who's interested in safer, more pleasant streets here in San Francisco!

Family Style on Thing-A-Day

Just so you know, founding Family members Jonas Madden-Connor and François Vigneault are posting daily drawings (and other creative artifacts) over at Thing-A-Day. It's a really fun month-long project in which hundreds of very diverse creators (including some cartoonist friends like Ryan Germick, Rina Ayuyang, Brian Kaas, Hob, Laterborn, and MariNaomi) make a commitment to do some creative project each day and post it to a communal blog... Lots of interesting and enjoyable stuff, very inspiring!

Two New Titles in the Store!

Over the weekend Family Style premired two new creations at the Indy Euphoria show in Sacramento, and they are now both available in the Family Style store:


Our good pal Nick St. John keeps cranking out top-notch stories, his latest, following close on the heels of last year's Mr. Mortiz, is a often funny but ultimately somber look at the yawning gulf that so often exists between our dreams and reality, How I Came To Work at the Wendy's. Highly reccomended!



Second, we have another great issue of François Vigneault's ongoing nature journal series, Bird Brain #3! Lots of the usual elegant black and white illustrations and journal enteries, but this issue also features a gorgeous color centerfold, too! For preview images and ongoing updates, check out the Bird Brain Journals.

Family Style will be rocking it at the first-ever Indy Euphoria show in Sacramento, an interesting mash-up of the indy comix and vinyl toy worlds... We've staked out a space along with some of our favorite creators: PS Comics, Damien Jay, Susie Cagle, Jason Martin, Josh Frankel, Andrice Arp, and Jesse Reklaw, and we'll be neighboring the great Portland publishing house Sparkplug Comics! Whew! They've also got some great special guests from these different facets of the indy/DIY art scene, including Jim Woodring, Jeffery Brown, Tom Neely... should definitely be a fun show!

Oh! And of course we are premiereing a couple of wee books for the show, too! François will have the newest instalment of Bird Brain, and Nick St. John just completed a fantastic new comic called "How I Came to Work at Wendy's", and we'll have both on sale this weekend! See you in Sacramento!

Drawing Challenge - Marvel Smackdown

While we (Jonas and François) while away our time at comics conventions, we often try and use the time to entertaining, if pointless, ends: Drawing the kind of goofy stuff that got us into comics in the first place. With that laudable goal in mind, at this year's APE, we came up with a fun game: Draw a pair of Marvel comics characters battling it out in some fashion. The rules were: One hour time limit, someone else picks the characters, no looking online or elsewhere for costume reference, etc. Here are the results:

Mr. Fantastic vs Doctor Doom, by Jonas



Galactus vs Thor, by François



MODOK ve Speedball, by Jonas (guest-suggested by the brilliant Trevor Alixopulos)



Hulk vs Havok, by François



BONUS! Green Goblin vs Doctor Octopus, by Tim Lajeunesse of Love Letter Press! Coming soon!

Bird Brain #2 available in the Store

We had a great time at APE this year, and there was a very warm reception for François' newest nature-journaling issue, Bird Brain #2. If you didn't get a chance to pick up this little gem of a zine (everything hand-done, from the Gocco-print cover to the trimming and the corner-rounding; each issue is also serially numbered, edition of 200), its now available in our new store page! And watch the Bird Brain Journals for more updates and journal entries leading up to Bird Brain #3, out in early 2010!